Seriously though, I really do love the opening titles of Reggie Perrin.
I’m Not a Title Sequences Person
Published 18th November 2023
Freeze-Frame Gonna Drive You Insane, Part Four
Published 12th November 2023
Part One • Part Two • Part Three • Part Four • Part Five
It feels like ages since we last checked in with The Young Ones. A brief recap, then. Back in 1984, the BBC had just transmitted the show’s second and final series… but not without some problems. In particular, the final flash frame intended for inclusion in “Summer Holiday” was cut entirely, much to the displeasure of the team. But surely the show was now home and dry?
Well, what do you think?
A hint of what was to come can be found in the following from Hansard. It isn’t normal for questions to be asked of Ministers about a sitcom.1 And yet on the 27th June 1984, just eight days after Series 2 of The Young Ones had finished airing, that is exactly what happened. Conservative MP for Cardiff West, Stefan Terlezki, was our ersatz Norris McWhirter.
“Mr. Terlezki asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what safeguards there are against subliminal messages appearing on the British Broadcasting Corporation; and if he is satisfied that these are adequate.”
Douglas Hurd, then a Minister of State for the Home Office, gave the following reply:
“I am satisfied that clause 13(6) of the BBC’s Licence and Agreement of 2 April 1981, which requires the corporation not to include subliminal messages in its programmes, provides an adequate safeguard. It is for the BBC’s board of governors to ensure that the provision is observed. I understand that the corporation considers that some brief, unrelated inserts included in a recent BBC comedy series might have been regarded as in breach of the spirit of the provision, and steps were taken to prevent a recurrence.”
Which brings up an interesting question: were subliminal images really banned on the BBC at the time? The above suggests that they were. And yet Paul Jackson, on the 2007 DVD documentary The Making of The Young Ones, seemed to disagree:
“And although it wasn’t illegal at the BBC because the commercial issue didn’t arise, it was raised, and it went up to Bill Cotton… and the edict came down you’ve gotta take it out.
Meanwhile, the Nottingham Evening Post, on the 16th June 1984, reported the following:
“A BBC spokeswoman said the BBC’s Charter does cover subliminal techniques, from the political and advertising point of view, but that these pictures could not be deemed harmful.
“This is a joke flash-frame technique which is harmless”, she said.”
There’s only one way to find out the truth. We need to get hold of a copy of the BBC’s Licence and Agreement. Not this damn thing, dated December 2016, but the document quoted by Hurd from April 1981.
I have a copy. Clause 13(6) states the following:
“The Corporation shall at all times refrain from sending any broadcast matter which includes any technical device which, by using images of very brief duration or by any other means, exploits the possibility of conveying a message to, or otherwise influencing the minds of, members of an audience without their being aware, or fully aware, of what has been done.”
Which sounds suspiciously familiar. Let’s compare this to Section 4(3) of the Broadcasting Act 1981, which IBA-licensed stations were supposed to abide by:
“It shall be the duty of the Authority to satisfy themselves that the programmes broadcast by the Authority do not include, whether in an advertisement or otherwise, any technical device which, by using images of very brief duration or by any other means, exploits the possibility of conveying a message to, or otherwise influencing the minds of, members of an audience without their being aware, or fully aware, of what has been done.”
The similarity in language is obvious. At the very least, the intent for the BBC was exactly the same as for the IBA: to strongly discourage the use of flash frames. Whether it would have stood up in a court of law is a different question, and one which was never answered in practice.
Or indeed a variety show, but let’s not start all that again. ↩
Alan Partridge’s Sporting Season
Published 3rd November 2023
STEVE COOGAN: I remember these clips that I comment to… Armando just came in with a load of sports clips and just put them on and said “Just say some stuff to these”. There was no script, just see what’s happening, just say stuff. So it was all made up as we went along.
Steve Coogan on… his most iconic TV moments, British GQ
Earlier this year, I asked the question: when did Alan Partridge first appear on television? The answer was a VERY CLEVER ONE because I AM BRILLIANT.
It was also an answer which is a little beside the point. The first real TV Partridge sketch was in the first episode of The Day Today, on the 19th January 1994. Yes, it’s highlights of Alan’s Sporting Season.
But have you ever wondered exactly where each piece of sports footage from the above sketch came from? The answer, of course, is: “No John, only you and you alone have ever done that”. But for those of you who are interested, please enjoy the following.
Resurrection.
Published 1st November 2023
As someone who deeply believes in keeping the archives of everything you do online, I find it forever upsetting that I deleted all my 2000s-era blog posts from the internet. My penchant back then for “starting again, but this time I’ll get it right” lead to the deletion of a whole load of my stuff. It’s so totally the opposite of anything I’d do now.
Recently, this has been playing on my mind even more than usual. And then I remembered something. A few years ago, back in 2017, I resurrected an old Red Dwarf group blog from the dead. Maybe I should do the same for all my old blog archives. I’m sure somewhere, on some old hard drive, I’ve got a copy, haven’t I? And even if I haven’t, surely the Wayback Machine has kept most of it?
So I took a look. After all, there must be some good stuff there, even if it isn’t all gold. It really would be nice to practice what I preach, and revive all my old posts for good. That has to be a worthwhile thing to do.
You know what, never mind.
Creatures of Flesh and Blood
Published 31st October 2023
I’d like to quote to you one of my favourite pieces of criticism about animation. Scrub that, it’s one of my favourite pieces of criticism full stop. It’s from Michael Barrier’s Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age (Oxford University Press, 1999), and is about Disney’s first feature length animation, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).
The important thing you need to know about the following is what Barrier means by rotoscoping in this context. For a fair chunk of Snow White, live action versions of each scene were filmed; these were then used as reference for the animation, either as loose inspiration, or in the later stages of production, rather more directly. Rotoscoping is this latter technique: literally tracing over the live action footage of the actors, in order to create the animation.
As Barrier describes, this caused noticeable problems in the final film. But he describes it using an absolutely beautiful piece of writing. The kind of writing that inspires any critic to try and become better at their craft.
“Snow White‘s failings do not count for much when weighed against its great central successes, and the film’s most obvious failing – the weak, rotoscope-derived animation of Snow White and the Prince in the opening and closing scenes – actually gives it a dimension that Disney himself surely did not intend. It is in those scenes that the film is most wholly “fairy tale,” artificial and removed from reality; the all-but-weightless animation in the opening scenes is of a piece with the operetta-like musical treatment. Snow White seems more substantial when the animals lead her through the woods and into the dwarfs’ cottage, and then as she cleans the cottage—the music here is a work song. By the time she meets the dwarfs, she is at last a solid figure. She is most real in the evening musicale, as she dances with the dwarfs; her graceful movements, although they originated with Marjorie Belcher, are wholly the character’s.
Disney decided as early as the fall of 1934 to fence off the final sequence from the rest of the film by using a highly artificial device, three title cards that represent the changing seasons. It is in that sequence that Snow White melts again into a reverie. When the Prince appears at her glass coffin, operetta returns with him—he is singing “One Song,” his serenade at the beginning of the film. The dwarfs are mere spectators as the Prince kisses Snow White and lifts her to carry her away. He pauses long enough for her to kiss the dwarfs; she addresses only Grumpy and Dopey by name. The boy and girl are like two wraiths, bidding farewell to creatures of flesh and blood. Only what comes in between the fairy-tale sequences seems altogether real: the homely particulars of housekeeping and cooking and amusing one another, and the girl’s death most of all. It is as if the dwarfs dreamed this lovely girl’s life before she joined them, ever so briefly, and now that she is dead, they dream of her resurrection.
That the film should admit of such an interpretation is owing not just to the weakness of the rotoscoping, but to the tremendous vitality of the best dwarf animation. Because that animation is so emotionally revealing, it is the dwarfs, and not the characters who look more nearly human, who are the most like us. And like us, they long for a world where kindness can vanquish cruelty, and love conquer death.”
Barrier isn’t exaggerating about the odd nature of the rotoscoped scenes which bookend Snow White; even a cursory watch reveals they have a markedly different nature to the central part of the film. But it’s his interpretation about why those scenes still work anyway which I find the most fascinating.
I Hate Doing Research, Part Six
Published 30th October 2023
One of the most frustrating things about writing my series on flash-frames in The Young Ones and Spitting Image has been how absurdly difficult the research has been. There really is a ludicrous amount of misinformation out there. I already wrote a little about this at the start of the year, but I have more examples. Oh, so many more examples.
Take Peter Seddon’s Law’s Strangest Cases (Portico, 2016), which is one of the very few books to discuss the Norris McWhirter Spitting Image flash. To the point where it has been used as a main source in reporting elsewhere online. Quite understandably – this is a proper, published book, it really shouldn’t be getting major things wrong.
Sadly, we immediately run into problems:
“It all started with the television broadcast of a 1984 episode of Spitting Image, the series whose lampoonery through the medium of cruelly parodic puppetry has caused many a celebrity to fume.
The good news for Norris was that he wasn’t on it. Or was he? For thereby hangs the tale.”
I mean, he certainly wasn’t in a 1984 episode of Spitting Image. That was the famed “scriptwriters are incredibly good in bed” flash, not the Norris McWhirter head-on-topless-body flash, which happened in 1985.
But let’s not get grumpy about an incorrect date. That’s arsehole territory. The bulk of the reporting must surely be correct.
“The Times subsequently reported that Mr McWhirter, aged 59, had taken out an action for libel against the Independent Broadcasting Authority at Horseferry Road Magistrates’ Court. McWhirter was adamant that he had seen ‘a grotesque and ridiculing image of my face superimposed on the top of a body of a naked woman’. It really doesn’t bear thinking about.”
Norris McWhirter didn’t take any action for libel whatsoever. His case was solely concerned with subliminal messaging; libel was never part of his accusations.
Now true, the book does then go on to say the following:
“He asserted that the broadcasting of the image was a criminal offence under the Broadcasting Act 1981, but not because of ‘what’ it was – it was how long it lasted that was the real bone of contention.
‘And how long did it last?’ asked the judge with due concern. Norris McWhirter’s reply was brief but not nearly as brief as the offending image: ‘A quarter of a second,’ was his stunning reply.
McWhirter’s contention was that the image had been broadcast subliminally, using the sort of technique that unscrupulous advertisers or political regimes are said to employ to implant subconscious images and messages into the addled brains of the world’s couch potatoes.”
So the book does understand at least part of the case. But if you’re going to entirely misreport it as a libel action, you’ve pretty much fallen at the first hurdle.
Freeze-Frame Gonna Drive You Insane, Part Three
Published 29th October 2023
Part One • Part Two • Part Three • Part Four • Part Five
Content warning: very mild nudity.
When we last left Spitting Image, the team had just got themselves into a spot of bother. On the 10th June 1984, the show broadcast the following message, for one single frame:
Our old friend Tooth and Claw reveals the immediate fallout:
“It was not many hours before a viewer with a freeze-frame facility brought it to the attention of the IBA. Stephen Murphy, the IBA programme officer who had been so indulgent with Spitting Image in the early days, called up John Lloyd with a new tone of voice: ‘My dear boy, you’ve broken the law. Haven’t you read the Broadcasting Act?’ Lloyd confessed that he hadn’t but said he had read the offending text over to Central’s duty lawyer who had cleared it and had, in any case, thought the prohibition related specifically to advertising. Murphy, apparently unimpressed, hung up with: ‘You’ll be hearing from me at some future date.'”
When we discussed Labour’s Party Political Broadcast from 1970 and Ross McWhirter, we spent a lot of time with the ITA and the Television Act 1964. By the time we get to Spitting Image, the ITA has become the IBA, and the Television Act 1964 has been replaced with the Broadcasting Act 1981.1
The relevant section of the new Broadcasting Act is 4(3):
“It shall be the duty of the Authority to satisfy themselves that the programmes broadcast by the Authority do not include, whether in an advertisement or otherwise, any technical device which, by using images of very brief duration or by any other means, exploits the possibility of conveying a message to, or otherwise influencing the minds of, members of an audience without their being aware, or fully aware, of what has been done.”
You will note that this is word-for-word identical to section 3(3) of the Television Act 1964. You will also note that Lloyd’s impression that “the prohibition related specifically to advertising” is most definitely wrong; subliminal material is clearly stated to be banned “whether in an advertisement or otherwise”.
Tooth and Claw continues:
“On this wording, it looked as if anyone who cared to bring a prosecution would have the IBA bang to rights. On the day after the incident, the IBA sternly reprimanded Central as the responsible company and Central told Lloyd never to do such a thing again, making it an area to which he would irresistibly return.
It was the quality of naughtiness, rather than politically-motivated satire, that was now becoming Spitting Image‘s defining characteristic.”
In fact, nobody did care to bring a prosecution for the above incident. But Tooth and Claw does state that somebody had “complained to the IBA’s director-general, John Whitney, in the strongest terms”.
Who was that somebody? None other than a certain Norris McWhirter. This fact is not only mentioned in Tooth and Claw, but also evidenced by letters in the IBA archive. Ross McWhirter was murdered by the IRA in 1975; his brother Norris had clearly taken up Ross’s crusade against subliminal messages, whether in good faith or otherwise.
But for now, there is where things ended. There were no mentions of the incident in the last episode of the series on the 17th June, though the temptation must surely have been strong.2 And after that, not even Spitting Image could cause trouble while they were off-air. Central and the IBA would get six months respite from all this nonsense, at least.
Knickers Bum and Poo
Published 26th October 2023
This is the kind of thing I randomly find on my hard drive. Enjoy.
Hacker Time, Series 5 Episode 10, 7th August 2015.
The Saddest Short Story Ever Told
Published 25th October 2023
The Ormskirk Advertiser, 19th January 1989.
That Squalid Little Rag
Published 15th October 2023
On the 9th March 1981, BBC2 first broadcast the Yes Minister episode “The Death List”. It’s a particularly good episode for many reasons, not least Graeme Garden marching into the programme for one show-stealing scene, and turning it into The Goodies.
But that’s comedy, and we don’t deal with comedy around here. We deal with far more important things. Such as: which issue of Private Eye is Jim Hacker reading from here?
Is it a real issue of the magazine? Or is it a prop, made from scratch?
Let’s see what we can dig up. Our first point of call is, of course, Private Eye‘s covers library, which usefully gives us an image of every single cover since the magazine’s first issue. And to help narrow down the search, we also know that “The Death List” was recorded in studio on the 1st February 1981. Did they just grab the latest issue of the Eye and bung it in Paul Eddington’s hands?
Not quite. The above cover doesn’t appear in Private Eye‘s cover archive. But Issue 497, dated the 2nd January 1981 – just a month before the studio date – looks rather suspicious:
That purple background is very distinctive. Which gave me ideas. But there was only one way to know whether I was right. Luckily, the back page of the magazine is very prominent in the episode as well, with the obvious wording of CAMP AFRICA in the top left.
A quick eBay later, and I held a copy of Issue 497 in my sweaty, desperate hands. Was my gut feeling correct?
Yes indeed. The prop department simply got a recent issue of Private Eye, stuck a new picture on the front over the old one, and job done. Lovely.1
The question is: why exactly did Yes Minister bother to change the picture? Is it because the original cover has TV-am stars on? Could they not get the rights? Or did the Beeb literally not want to advertise ITV?
It’ll be something like that, anyway. But I would suggest there’s another reason why it makes sense to have a mocked-up Private Eye cover. The world of Yes Minister isn’t quite our world. Sure, there are newspapers dotted around the series which have real-life headlines, but they aren’t usually plot-relevant props. As soon as something gets drawn into the story, it makes sense for the issue of Private Eye to not be a “real” one. Things are supposed to be slightly askew. ↩